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 People with serious psychological distress, which includes any
mental illness severe enough to require treatment, are three times
more likely to be too poor to afford care and 10 times more likely
to be unable to pay for medications, the study found.
“Adults with serious psychological distress are more likely to
experience delays in healthcare, insufficient money for needed
healthcare, change their place of health care, and change their
place of healthcare due to insurance,” said lead study author Judith
Weissman of New York University Langone Medical Center.
“They are also more likely to have limitations in ability to work,
and in activities of daily living compared to adults without serious
psychological distress,” Weissman said by email.
For the study, researchers examined survey data on health care use
from 2006 to 2014 for a nationwide sample of 207,853 U.S. adults
ages 18 to 64. About two-thirds of participants were white and
almost one-third had at least a college education.
To assess how many people had serious psychological distress,
researchers focused on questions that examined how often
participants experienced feelings like exhaustion, hopelessness,
nervousness, restlessness, sadness and worthlessness.
Overall, about 3.4 percent of adults, representing more than 8.3
million people, reported serious psychological distress in 2014, up
from roughly 3 percent at the start of the study, researchers report
in the journal Psychiatric Services.
By the end of the study, 9.9 percent of adults with serious
psychological distress couldn’t afford to see a mental health care
provider, up from 8.7 percent in 2006, the study found.
The pattern was reversed for adults without these mental illnesses;
8 percent couldn’t afford to see a mental health care provider in
2014, down from 10.7 percent at the start of the study.
Over that same time, the proportion of mentally ill adults who
couldn’t pay for drugs climbed from 8.7 percent to 9.9 percent. For
people without serious psychological distress, the proportion of
adults unable to afford medications dropped from 10.7 percent to 8
percent.
Access and affordability appear to have worsened for people with
serious psychological distress despite two U.S. laws designed to do
the opposite: the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act
and the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, the
researchers note.
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One limitation of the study is that researchers only had one year of
data under the ACA, which might not fully account for changes in
access or affordability in subsequent years, the authors note.
Researchers lacked data to examine how different states’ approaches
to expanding Medicaid coverage through the ACA might influence
whether mentally ill adults could get needed care.
“There is overwhelming evidence that untreated mental illness
impacts people's jobs and performance in school, which in turn
influence their ability to access health care,” said Dr. Joseph
Puyat of the Center for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences at
the University of British Columbia.
“Even when access is provided for by publicly-funded insurance
coverage, people with untreated mental illness face challenges
adhering to their treatment,” Puyat, who wasn’t involved in the
study, said by email.
At the same time, dealing with the complexities of the U.S. health
care system can prove daunting for people with mental illness, said
Benjamin Cook, director of the Health Equity Research Lab at
Cambridge Health Alliance and a researcher at Harvard Medical
School.
“Some with symptoms of depression have a very difficult time
mustering up the energy to leave the house, so you can imagine how
difficult it is to generate the motivation to understand and
navigate the complicated healthcare system,” Cook, who wasn’t
involved in the study, said by email. “For others, seeking medical
care raises anxiety and exacerbates symptoms.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2oPCmdI Psychiatric Services, online April 17,
2017.
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